LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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'HVklllYlfTA'M f**.. 



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Ctje Union! 1 1) e Constitution onb tl)c faros. 

SECESSION, 

A NATIONAL CRIME AND CURSE: 



DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED IN 



THE TABERNACLE CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 



BEFORE THE 



FIRST AND TABERNACLE BAPTIST CONGREGATIONS, 



National Fast Day, April 30th. 1863. 



BY DANIEL C. EDDY. 



PHILADELPHIA : 
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

No. 530 ARCH STREET. 
1863. 



s. 









^7<i 



/£f 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Rev. D. C. Eddy, U.D. 



Philadelphia, May 1, 1863. 



Dear Sir :— 

Believing that the sentiments of the discourse delivered by you on the 
National Fast Day, April 30th, 1863, before the united congregations of the 
First and Tabernacle Baptist Churches, should receive a wider dissemination, 
we respectfully ask a copy for publication. 



Very sincerely yours, 



Wm. F. Hanseix, 
Hknkv Ceoskbt, 
Park II. Cassadt, 



B. Griffith. 



E. A. Palmer, 
B. R. Loxdet, 
John C. Davis, 



REPLY. 



Philadelphia, May 9, 1863. 
Gentlemen : 

I accede to your request to publish the sermon preached in the Tabernacle 
on Fast Day, because I believe no man has a right to withhold from the public 
any utterances which, in the candid judgment of his friends, may assist in the 
formation of Union sentiment, and the support of the Government. Had 
the pulpit of the land been faithful, this Rebellion would never have 
occurred. Treason rages, and rebellion is rife in those States where it has 
been the people's boast that "politics are never carried into the pulpit" : and 
the Constitution finds its most devoted supporters in these communities where 
the ministers of religion have been most faithful in holding the conscience of 
men to the claims of law and the obligation of citizenship. The Rebellion 
originated and riots still, where "ministers have never meddled with politics." 

I have tried to speak in this discourse, not as a partizan, but as a Christian 
patriot, holding the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other. An 



unpatriotic ministry is a libel on the Christian church. The blood of this 
war stains and clots a dumb, silent pulpit all over, and cries to heaven 
against the Watchman who saw the sword coming on the land, and gave no 
warning. 

No great reform was ever inaugurated, no grand revolution ever achieve 
liberty for a state or a nation without the pulpit. John Adams, s lys : 
American Independence was owing more to the Republican views of the 
clergy, and the weight which their opinion had with the people than any 
other cause ; and Gen. Lincoln wrote to Washington in 177S, — " It is for- 
tunate for us that the clergy are generally with us." 

Some have said that the clergy do not understand the Constitution, and 
cannot rightly expound it, therefore, they should be silent on national 
themes ! Is the Constitution written in hieroglyphics ? Is it a sort of 
Chinese puzzle that needs a magician to find it out? Is this Magna Charta 
of our liberties so obscure and unintelligible that a man must study law an d 
be an expert in party politics to comprehend it I No, the Constitution is so 
transparent and clear that a child may understand it. The framers of that 
document made it so plain that the farmer on the prairie, the boatman on 
the lake, the operative in the mill, the immigrant landing on our shores, and 
the laborer in the street might comprehend it ; and the time has come when 
the people would prefer as interpreter? of that sacred document, loyal clergy- 
men to disloyal politicians. 

May the time soon come when the Union shall be restored, the Constitu- 
tion vindicated, and the Laws obeyed from the St. Lawrence to the Rio 
Grande ; when the dear old flag shall float over every State, and slavery our 
curse shall be purged away, and just, honorable peace shall wave her olive 
branch over a prospered industry, and a loyal people. 

I am, gentleman. 

Your obedient servant, 

Daniel C. EdTjy. 

To Messrs. Wm. F. Hansell, Henry Croskey, Park H. Cassady, E. A. 
Palmer, B. R. Loxley, B. Griffith. John C. Davis. 



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DISCOURSE. 



ISAIAH, vnr., 12. 

Say ye not, a confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall 
say, a confederacy. 

The moral attitude of the American people to- 
day, is one of profound awe. The whole nation, 
as by one common impulse, has gone down on its 
knees before the throne of God. Among the moun- 
tains of Maine, along the shores of Massachusetts 
bay, in surging New York, in quiet Philadelphia, 
in all the cities of the West, along the leaping Mis- 
sissippi, away out to the Pacific Ocean, Christians 
assemble at this unusual hour for religious wor- 
ship. The Puritan of New England, the Catholic 
of Maryland, the Quaker of Pennsylvania, the 
Lutheran of Ohio, the German of Missouri, all lisp 
one prayer to-day—" Our Country." The merchant- 
princes of the East have closed their doors and 
locked their counting-houses; the farmer on the 
prairie of the West has left the plough in the 
furrow and the ox in the stall ; the gold digger on 

the far distant coast has forgotten his gains, while 

2 



he gives the day to his native land, the honor and 
perpetuity of which are far more valuable than 
gold and precious stones. The sermons preached 
have one common subject, the prayers offered bear 
of one common burden — " Our Country." A nation 
of thirty millions of people, representing all the inter- 
ests of mankind, and freighted with all the hopes 
of universal progress, has gone into the audience 
chamber of the King of kings, and Constitutional 
Liberty, stands waiting at the door to know what 
God the Lord, will say. 

Crowded between this day and the 15th of April, 
1861, are the most notable events that ever trans- 
pired on this continent. A country that had risen 
to stupendous proportions, that occupied the most 
enviable position on the globe, that was making 
gigantic strides towards national wealth and politi- 
cal aggrandizement, was plunged at once into all the 
horrors of a civil war so colossal in its proportions, 
that months rolled away before the laboring minds 
of our statesmen could comprehend the importance 
or measure the magnitude of the catastrophe. 

For many years past things have been tending to 
the result we now witness. In the very core of 
our national greatness a reptile had deposited an 
egg which time has hatched, and a most fearful 
brood let loose. The troubles which have culminated 
in civil war, are not of modern origin. They com- 



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menced away down in the early history of our 
Government, and have grown until they have become 
mighty enough to convulse the whole structure. 
There has not been an hour since the days of Nul- 
lification when there have not been men who de- 
sired the destruction of the Union; and the whole 
history of our legislation has been but little more 
than an effort to bolster up, vitalize, perpetuate, and 
make national one of the institutions of the South, 
at which Humanity shuddered, and from which Chris- 
tianity turned away aghast. 

The idea of dissolving this Government, rupturing 
this Union, dividing these States into a half dozen 
guerilla settlements was so monstrous, that few 
believed it would ever be seriously undertaken. 
Secession threats and nullification challenges had so 
often been made, that we passed them by as the chat- 
tering of children. We could not conceive of such 
madness as would be shown in an effort to destroy this 
Republic. The positive destruction of the South was 
so certain, and the ruin of the North so probable, that 
we treated the brutal menaces as so many vain threats 
of a bully, that were meaningless. The people of the 
South were deceived by this calmness. Our indiffer- 
ence to their abuse was regarded as cowardice. We 
had yielded to them so long, that they believed us des- 
titute of heroism and manliness. Our politicians had 
so often gone clown on their knees to them, and our 



8 

merchants had hung upon their bids with so much ser- 
vility, that they had come to look upon us as " vassals," 
" mudsills," " low whites," who were to be tolerated 
as the operatives, common carriers, and school-masters 
for a Southern gentry. One chivalrous son of the South 
was believed to be match for five Yankee soldiers on 
the field ; and the delusion prevailed that when the 
struggle came the North would basely yield, as it had 
yielded a hundred times before. Had the South 
understood us, not a single State would have dared 
initiate secession. The leaders in the Rebellion 
doubtless supposed that as soon as the trump of war 
was sounded, the Democratic party would hold in 
check the Republicans, while they, lords of the soil, 
" to the manor born," woidd march into Washington, 
assume the functions of Government, be immediately 
recognized by European powers, and after a bloodless 
>truggle, New England, with a few other Northern 
States, would be crowded out, and left shivering in 
the wind, while the new Union, republican in form, 
but despotic in character, with slavery for its corner- 
stone, and human bondage for its walls and bulwarks, 
should stretch from the Potomac to the Gidf of 
Mexico, from Washington to New Orleans; con- 
trolling that gulf, holding the keys of the Missis- 
sippi, circumscribing the commerce of the North-west, 
and taking in the gold shores of the Pacific coast. It 
was a beautiful dream from which those disloyal States 



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awoke as in a horrid night-marc. It was a beatific 
vision which in twelve months was dissolved in 
blood, dissipated in tears and death. It was a 
popular phantasm which ended in bread riots, in the 
most odious conscription ever known to earth, and 
in a shadow on the wall of every household in the 
the once sunny South. 

Events have followed each other in rapid succes- 
sion. The boasted civilization of the South has been 
unveiled, and the world now sees it to have been but 
a gossamer robe covering the barbarism of slavery. 
Modern warfare has no horrors such as have been 
perpetrated by the infuriated people of the South. 
The sufferings of Union men have been indescribable. 
They have been dragged from their homes, despoiled 
of their property, denied the commonest civilities of 
life, and slaughtered without mercy. Mothers have 
sought refuge in the Federal camps, bearing their 
sick children from their sacked and burning houses ; 
husbands have come, leaving their dead wives 
where they had been shot down by remorseless 
cruelty. Old men have come with their flesh bruised 
and their bodies scarred by the lash and the torture. 
The Rebellion has been without the magnanimity of 
Justice or the dignity of Revolution. From the first 
it has been a thievish, murderous, barbarous out- 
rage, without cause, without justice, and God grant 
that it may be without success. As the younger Pitt 



10 

said of the Revolutionary War, " It was conceived in 
injustice, nurtured in folly, and its footsteps are 
marked with slaughter and desolation." 

And yet, our great Government, so magnanimous 
that it accords to traitors belligerent rights, and treats 
them with all the honors and courtesies of war ; so just 
that it has surrendered crime-dyed rebels taken on 
board British vessels with the emblems of treason in 
their hands, and given up pirate ships taken in acts of 
grievous felony, in compliance with the demands of 
international law ; so humane and merciful that the 
President has not yet signed the death warrant of a 
single traitor, nor banished those abettors of treason 
who have clogged the wheels of the Administration, 
crippled the energies of the nation, betrayed the secrets 
of the cabinet, and been a hundred fold more injurious 
and mischievous than they could have been in com- 
mand of pirate ships, or at the head of rebel regiments : 
— this great Government is asked to recognize the 
Southern Confederacy, lend itself to a scheme that 
would receive the scorn of all who love liberty through- 
out the world, and merit the denunciation of every 
coining age. "A Confederacy! A Confederacy!" is the 
constant demand. Peace will not satisfy. Concession 
will not answer. Compromise will not meet the de- 
mand. "A Confederacy! A Confederacy!" 

Let us consider who are asking for a Confederacy, 
and why the demand cannot be granted. 



/J4 

11 

1. Who demand a Confederacy? "Who want to 
have this Union broken up, this Government ruptured 
and the greatness of this nation destroyed? "We 
must look for such in different directions : 

1. The aristocratic elements, and the despotic 
powers of Europe are saying, " A Confederacy ! A 
Confederacy !" However much we may appreciate 
the noble efforts of Richard Cobden and John Bright 
in the House of Commons, Baptist Noel and Newman 
Hall in the pulpit, the Star and the News in London, 
the Mercury in Leeds, the Examiner in Manchester, 
we cannot shut our eyes to the monstrous fact that the 
governing classes in England, where we should receive 
nothing but sympathy and assistance, desire and ex- 
pect the dissolution of the Union. And though we may 
be intensely grateful for the sympathy of Victor Hugo 
and Garibaldi, for the kind words and wishes of the 
down-trodden Italians, and the struggling Poles, we 
cannot be insensible to the fact that the powers now 
swaying continental Europe, — imperial France, and 
despotic Austria, Catholic Sardinia, and Protestant 
Prussia, would all rejoice in the downfall of this Re- 
public. If Russia is our friend, it is not from any 
inherent love of liberty, but because England and 
France are our enemies. The causes of this we do 
not discuss ; the fact is patent and palpable to all men. 
Royal aristocracies, privileged classes, hereditary 
nobility are all opposed to this nation, whose history 



12 

is the text-book of Polish patriotism, Hungarian revo- 
lution, and Italian nationality. The example of this 
people has been a contagion which has threatened all 
the nations of Europe, and shaken every throne. The 
existence of this Government with its simple habits, 
its unostentatious institutions, its economical machinery, 
is a standing reproach to Kings and Courts. From 
the hour of the adoption of the Constitution to the 
bombardment of Sumter, the United States stood as a 
peaceful but sublime protest against the usurpations 
of crowned monarchs and the extravagance of royal 
families. And when the hour of our trial came, and 
it seemed probable that this great light of Constitu- 
tional liberty would be extinguished in blood, immense 
satisfaction was felt in almost every Court in Europe. 
England and France, Governments that have most 
power to harm us, have from the beginning acted a 
cowardly and treacherous part. The sympathy we 
have expected has been lavished upon our foes ; the 
assistance we should have received has been given to 
armed rebels; and everything has been done which 
those nations dared to do, to widen the breach and 
make reunion impossible. The position held by 
English statesmen, by Gladstone, Palmerston and 
Russell, is that the Union is already dissolved, that a 
plurality of Governments here, is now inevitable; 
and the most they pretend to do, is to maintain a neu- 
trality which will put them on good footing with both 



13 

fragments when the war is over. The duplicity of 
Great Britain is shameful. A pound of tobacco can- 
not get through an English port without detection 
and yet ships manned by a hundred men can slip out 
without being seen. Forgetful of the honorable 
course of our own Government in similar cases, 
England has connived at the building of pirate ships, 
and when they have been completed, they have been 
manned by British seamen and tracked the ocean 
under the British flag. The river Clyde has been the 
Confederate dock yard, resounding with the hammer, 
night and day, on the sides of pirate vessels; and 
British ports in our own waters have been arsenals, 
collieries, and merchandise depots for the outfit and 
refit of these outlaw ships. While the George Gris- 
wold was sailing along the English coast with a cargo 
of bread for the starving operatives of Lancashire, the 
pirate Sumter was being refitted at Birkenhead, to 
prey upon American commerce, and plunder our mer- 
chant ships. While Lord John Russell was toying 
with Mr. Adams, the privateer Japan ran out and 
escaped under the British flag. All that is needed 
now, is to give new titles to a few of these pirate 
ships and make them English in name as they are in 
fact — calling the Alabama, the Palmerstojst, and styling 
the Florida, the Roebuck. Candid Englishmen admit 
the wrongs done us by " perfidious Albion." At that 
great sympathy meeting held in Manchester, Goodwin 



14 



Smith, Regius Professor of History at Oxford, plainly 
said : " No nation ever inflicted upon another a more 
flagrant or a more maddening wrong. No nation with 
English hlood in its veins had ever borne such a 
wrong without resentment. The case of the Alabama 
bore no analogy to the case of sale of munitions of 
war. She was not, like munitions of Avar, exported to 
the territory of the purchaser. She did not go — she 
never was meant to go — into a Confederate port ; up 
to this moment she had never entered a port in the 
Confederate territory. Built and equipped in a British 
port, manned by British seamen, with the English flag 
flying, she went forth to cruise from an English port 
against the commerce of our allies." 

We arc in no condition now to use braggadocio 
language toward England. By all honorable means 
we must avoid war with that country, but war with 
her would be a boon and a blessing compared with a 
division of this land and the destruction of this Gov- 
ernment. In a war with England, a nation which 
has large North American possessions, and whose 
commerce whitens every sea, there would at least be 
compensation ; while the gigantic crime which Great 
Britain would have us commit, is fraught with no- 
thing but gigantic woe to the commerce, manufac- 
tures, industry and morals of both North and South. 

"We cannot misunderstand the debates in Parlia- 
ment, nor the utterances of the press, nor the action 



A: 

15 

of the Government. The idea prevails, and is openly 
expressed, that a dissolution of the Union would be 
better for the safety of the world, and the good of 
mankind. England that ought to be our friend is our 
enemy, and no intelligence would be received with 
greater enthusiasm by the aristocracy than that this 
Government had gone down in blood, and two or three 
weak, imbecile, guerilla States had risen on its ruins 
— States that would be customers, but not rivals to 
wave-ruling Britannia. 

Here then is the first demand for the dissolution of 
the Union, the dismemberment of the Government, 
and the ruin of the nation. It comes from selfish 
hypocritical England, that has its foot on the neck of 
Ireland, its grasp on the throat of Turkey, and that 
has India bound to the mouth of its cannon ! It comes 
from France, — ambitious, mysterious, paradoxical 
France, that wants to vie with England in dependent 
colonies, and that is looking through Mexico to 
257,453 square miles of glorious territory in Texas. 
It comes from the ambitious statesmen, the corrupt 
Governments, the rotten courts, the besotted tyrants, 
the crumbling thrones of Europe. 

2. The Slaveholders of the South are shouting, " A 
Confederacy! A Confederacy!" This is the slave- 
holder's war on Liberty and the Government. There 
never has been anything to divide this land and destroy 



16 

this Government but slavery. As long as the South 
had political predominance and could control the legis- 
lation of the country, slavery was safe. But the rapid 
growth of free States gave to the North political 
power. But it was never used. The North did not 
lay its hand on any right or institution of the South. 
Slavery itself was protected and guaranteed by the 
laws of the land. But an extension of slavery was 
necessary to its existence. It was dying on its own 
soil, and new territories must be invaded, and new 
States made. And because the North would not al- 
low the monstrous crime against humanity, the insane 
idea of a new Confederacy ripened into this blood- 
guilty Rebellion. When men in a coming age shall 
read the history of this outbreak, slavery will be recog- 
nized as the only cause, and to future generations, the 
Rebellion will be known as the slaveholder's war. 

Four millions of blacks in the South do not want 
this Union destroyed. The poor whites have no in- 
terest in the establishment of the Confederacy, and 
if left alone never would have lifted a hand against 
the Government. The bloody hand that tore the Con- 
stitution to pieces in Virginia, once the mother of 
Presidents, was the slaveholder's hand ; the sword 
that pierced the flag of our country as it fell drabbling 
in the mire of South Carolina, was the slaveholder's 
sword ; the bullets and bayonets that have strewn the 
banks of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, and 



17 

filled the swamps of the Chickahominy .with dead 
bodies, were the bullets and bayonets of the slave- 
holder; the voice that has invited England and France 
to pour their legions down upon us, to bombard our 
cities and destroy our commerce, is the slaveholder's 
voice. But to perpetuate and extend slavery, no man 
from Maine to Georgia would ask the dissolution of 
the Union. Take out this curse from us and these 
States would lock their hands again in one perpetual 
clasp of fraternity. 

And the hesitancy of this nation to destroy slavery 
the cause of our woes, will be a matter of some sur- 
prise to us and to future ages. It has perjured our 
Judges, corrupted our Senators, dishonored our flag, 
and yet we hesitate to strike the blow which shall end 
its existence, even though now we can do it Constitu- 
tionally and in harmony with the laws. The whole 
genius of slavery is wrong. It is based on an out- 
rage against human nature. Confucius, the Chinese 
philosopher, five hundred years before Christ, said : 
" What you yourself desire not, that do not to others;" 
and one greater than Confucius has given to the world 
a golden rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so to them." Alci- 
biades twenty-two hundred years ago, declared that 
"Nature made no man a slave;" and Aristotle affirms 
slavery to be "an institution altogether unnatural." 
According to Blackstone it is " contrary to the princi- 



18 

pies of natural law ;" and Patrick Henry impulsively 
exclaims, "I will not justify it;" Wesley stigmatized 
it as the "sum of all villainies;" and in 1826 John 
Randolph said in Congress, " I envy neither the head 
nor the heart of that man who rises here to defend 
slavery on principle." "We must be rid of it. We 
cannot hope for success from God while we protect it, 
and try to rind 

" A license in this Holy Book, 
For brutal lust and hell's red wrong ; 
Give Heaven the credit of a deed, 
That shames the nether pit." 

Slavery has always ruled this country, monopolized 
the offices and emoluments, and shaped all the affairs 
of State. In the Congress that dissolved at midnight 
on the third of March 1861, the South had twenty-one 
representatives for its slave property. Lowell and 
Lawrence have large manufactories of cotton ; Penn- 
sylvania has collieries and foundries ; New York has 
commerce, but that kind of property is not represented. 
The mill, the foundry and the ships have no single 
representative in Congress, but slave property sends 
there twenty-one representatives. In the election of 
President under the census of 1850, the South had 
120 electors, and the North 176, when if distributed 
according to population, the South would have had 
twenty-two less, and the North twenty-two more. 
Why should three men in Georgia, count as much as 



/Si 



19 



five in Pennsylvania in the election of President and 
Representatives in Congress \ 

The offices of the country have been largely held 
by Southern men. During the continuance of the 
Government, to the commencement of the present 
administration, the South has had the President twelve 
terms, and the North only six terms — the former 
holding the office forty-eight of the seventy-two years 
of the existence of the government. And the same 
disproportion will be seen if we consider the Judges 
of the Supreme Court, the office of Secretary of 
State, the President of the Senate, and the heads 
of the committees in the House of Representatives 
and the Senate. And the moment Southern supre- 
macy was endangered by the growth of free States, 
the bastard Confederacy originated. For the first time 
in human history, eight millions of people were 
dragged into a war to extend slavery ! For the first 
time since the world began, has a great community 
avowed its object in making war to be the oppression 
of mankind! For the first time in the annals of 
creation do we find that a continent must be drenched 
in blood to make slavery the corner-stone of an Em- 
pire ! Shut your eyes and there will come through 
the closed lids the ghastly light of this tremendous 
fact ! Close your ears and there will ring on them 
the thunder-truth of this amazing statement! This 
is the slaveholder's war on the Constitution and the 



20 

Laws, — on the Government and the flag, — on Union 
and Liberty. 

This is the second demand for dissolution. It 
comes from men who have fattened on the spoils of 
office ; from men who have enjoyed the honors and 
emoluments of office ; from men bound by oaths, and 
Constitutional obligations, and sacred associations. 
Slavery requires a separation from liberty, — it cannot 
live on the same soil: and to perpetuate that curse, 
your country is to be divided ; your Government be- 
come the sport of all men, and your flag that has been 
honored on every sea, be no more than an ensign of a 
power which has no means of avenging its wrongs, or 
of maintaining its honor. 

3. A few traitors in the North have joined the cry, 
" A Confederacy ! A Confederacy !" This is the most 
singular and humiliating confession of all. That the 
monarchies of Europe, and the aristocracies of decay- 
ing countries should wish this rival power dissolved is 
not a matter of surprise. It accords with poor fallen 
human nature, which we see so often painfully and 
fearfully illustrated in the history of men and nations. 
That the people of the South, heated with passion, 
warped by prejudice, influenced by ignorance and lust 
of power, should want a new Government, is not so 
surprising after all. They know that slavery cannot 
live in a free land, and their desire to have a Union 



/ 

21 

without a free State, without a free press, without a 
free school, without a free pulpit, is the natural 
result of the state of society in which they live. 

But, here in the North, in the city of Philadelphia, 
are men who would see the Union wrecked, the 
Government with all the hopes of Constitutional lib- 
erty stranded, the flag with its associations and deathless 
memories dishonored and trampled under foot. Thev 
cannot plead ignorance, for they know the wickedness 
of this mutiny, and are well aware how causeless the 
outbreak of violence is. And yet they would have 
the Government say to the disloyal States, ' ; "Wav- 
ward sisters, go in peace." They would have the 
stolen forts and arsenals, and public lands, set off to 
the plunderers ! They would have the power of the 
Government broken, the unity of the nation destroyed ! 
They are ready to give up the Capitol, — surrender 
Mount Vernon, — put the mouth of the Mississippi 
into hands of a foreign power. They speak patron- 
izingly and complimentary of Davis and his rebellious 
crew ; they assail the Government with wild abuse ; 
they misrepresent us abroad and paralyze us at home. 
There is no name in the language to characterize such 
men ; there are no epithets severe enough for the 
denunciation of such crimes against humanity. 
Traitor, was a fitting word to apply to Benedict 
Arnold, but is w^eak and tame when applied to men 

who enjoy the protection of this Government, and yet 

3 



22 

are trying to rend it to pieces ; who have been en- 
riched by our institutions, and yet would bury them 
in one common ruin. There are presses that are 
pouring out their venom on the Government ; there 
are pulpits that are dumb to every sentiment of 
loyalty, and ministers of religion who refuse to pray 
for the President of the United States, and the success 
of the Federal arms ; there are merchants ready to 
enrich themselves by supplying the rebels with con- 
traband goods ; there are politicians who hesitate not 
to hiss like serpents at the name of the President, and 
be jubilant at the success of the rebels in murdering 
your sons and brothers. They accuse the Government 
of inhumanity and violence, when they are all illus- 
trations of the forbearance and mercy of that Govern- 
ment. There is not one of them that may not 
stand up before God to-day, and say, " Here am I, a 
monument of the forbearance of this imperilled Gov- 
ernment, and the mercy of this abused President, for 
had the Government been vindictive, or the President 
a tyrant, I should have been hung long ago." 

That these men will meet just retribution in the 
end, we believe. Judas Iscariot met a deserved fate ; 
Benedict Arnold has gone down to a futurity of 
shame ; Gorgey will be execrated whenever the story 
of bleeding Hungary is told ; and there will come for 
these men who now are willing to destroy the Govern- 
ment under which we live, and which will yet become 



23 



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glorious, an infamy such as no traitors ever inherited. 
These men will be swept away, and the Government 
will live. " Let him who opposes it beware," as Gen. 
Butler said in his. New York speech. 

" The mower mows on — though the adder may writhe, 
Or the copperhead coil round the blade of his scythe." 

These three classes — the aristocrats and despots of 
Europe, the slaveholders of the South, and the traitors 
of the North, are at war with the government and are 
saying, " A confederacy ! A confederacy !" Each in 
its place is doing its utmost to sever the ties that bind 
these States together, and cover the continent with 
conflicting Republics, among which there could exist 
nothing but perpetual Avar and bloodshed. "The 
bubble of Democracy has burst," says the European 
aristocrat; "the States never can be put together 
again ; the Republic is stranded, and unless the war is 
soon closed, we must step in to settle the dispute, and 
draw the division lines between you." "We have 
got all we can out of the General Government," says 
the Southron. "We have had our forts built, our 
harbors fortified, our debts paid, the Indians chased 
from our soil, and now we wish to set up a Republic, 
the corner-stone of which shall be human bondage. 
No compromise, no concession, nothing but disunion. 
We go off with all your public property." "O let 
them go," says the Copperhead. " The North which is 



24 

composed of working people, ; the mudsills of society,' 
ought to submit to their Southern masters. Let them 
go; give them all they ask; pay the debts they have 
contracted in trying to destroy the Government ; let 
them have the whole of Virginia, and what they want 
of Maryland; let them have the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi; say to them, ' Wayward sisters, go in peace.' " 

But with such demands as these, compliance is impos- 
sible. If our Government ever consents to disunion, 
it will be the darkest day the world has seen since the 
fall of man. If we are driven by our own want of 
harmony to this result, not America alone, but the 
world will be afflicted. We believe a dissolu- 
tion of this Union is forbidden by Liberty and Law, 
by Nature and Almighty God. " Say ye not, A Con- 
federacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A 
Confederacy." O God give us grace not to say it ! 

And why can we not say "A Confederacy" to those 
who demand it \ 

1. Because a division of this country in the present 
Rebellion would be a crime, per se. Stripped of all 
its aggravating circumstances and its flimsy pretexts 
it is a sin against the Most High God. Governments 
are instituted by God. Law is administered by divine 
authority. A good Government is as necessarily sanc- 
tioned by God as are good family regulations. It is a 
crime to rebel against Government and Law, the nature 



/^0 

25 

of which the Bible clearly settles. The word of God 
positively states that " the powers that be, are ordained 
of God," and that " whoever . resisteth the power, 
resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they that resist, 
shall receive to themselves damnation." This Rebel- 
lion, then, is a crime, monstrous in magnitude, and 
fearful in its enormity. It is not a Revolution where 
wrongs are to be redressed, reforms inaugurated, and 
blessings secured, but an outlaw invasion of the rights 
of society. It is a crime against all Governments, 
human and divine. The honor of law, the security of 
nations, the safety of the world, requires it to be put 
down and punished. The moment our Government 
admits the right of secession, and consents to a divi- 
sion of our soil, it becomes party to an act of lawless- 
ness that shocks the world. We have no more right to 
sanction such a crime against Law, than we have to 
abolish, by act of Congress, the marriage relation. It is 
not a matter of mere policy, but of principle as immu- 
table as God's throne. It is not merely a question 
whether commerce and manufactures and material 
prosperity would be subserved by a dissolution or a con- 
tinuance of the Union. It is a question whether Law 
shall be executed and vindicated, whether Governments 
shall be upheld and supported ; or, whether every ad- 
venturous spirit may become an Absalom and set up a 
standard of revolt, and summon the discontented ones 
to arms for the overturn of public order and security. 



26 

2. The principle of Secession is mischievous, impol- 
itic, and suicidal. The principle admitted, there can 
be no end to division. The separation of North and 
South would be followed by a separation between East 
and West. There would be an Atlantic Confederacy 
and a Pacific Confederacy, and the time would soon 
come when scarcely two States would be found to- 
gether. The absurd doctrine of State rights carried 
out, would break up the Union into as many inde- 
pendent fragments as there are separate States. If 
each is allowed to secede at pleasure, or nullify the 
acts of the Federal Government while it remains, the 
Union is at an end, the Government dissolved. It is 
a principle under the application of which no Govern- 
ment can long exist, and no society can be secure. 
If the Southern States are allowed to secede now, 
why may not some restless adventurer lead out the 
City or State of New York % Why may not some 
recreant son of the Pilgrims take off old Massachu- 
setts'? Why may not some false hand pilot Pennsyl- 
vania out of the Union \ The principle is Constitu- 
tionally wrong, the theory is rotten to the core, and in 
the storm and terror and blood of this hour it must 
be repudiated. We must swing back from this revo- 
lutary notion of State rights to the unity of the gov- 
ernment and the supremacy of the Federal Constitu- 
tion. It is as true now as when uttered by the 
patriot Pericles, that "no State can be respected if 



27 

fragment after fragment may be detached from it with 
impunity, if traitors are permitted to delude and dis- 
compose the contented, and to seduce the ignorant 
from their allegiance; if loyalty is a weakness, sedition 
a duty, conspiracy wisdom, and rebellion heroism."' 
The patriotism of Pericles, the wisdom of Solon, the 
eloquence of Demosthenes, the integrity of Washing- 
ton, cannot save a nation or give unity to a govern- 
ment that rests on the mischievous doctrine of State 
rights as interpreted by Democratic casuists. Under 
such ruling, the Constitution is not worth the paper 
on which it is written ; " E Pluribus Unum " is but 
a lie, and the nation nothing but a mass of discordant 
and heterogeneous fragments. The very principle of 
secession involves war and bloodshed. That profound 
statesman who now sleeps by the sounding sea, at 
Marslifield, comprehended it all when he said in that 
never-to-be-forgotten speech: "He who sees these 
States, now revolving in harmony around a common 
centre, and expects to see them quit their places and 
fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to 
see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and 
jostle against each other in the realms of space, with- 
out producing the crush of the universe. There can 
be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable 
secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Con- 
stitution under which we live here — covering this 
whole country— is it to be thawed and melted away 



28 

by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt 
under the influence of a vernal sun — disappear almost 
unobserved, and die off] No, sir! no, sir! I will 
not state what might produce the disruption of the 
States ; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in 
heaven — I see that disruption must produce such a 
war as I will not describe." That indescribable war 
has come. All the bloodshed and the crime, the 
waste and woe of the past two years, is the legitimate 
result of secession. What we have seen is but the 
initial letter of the horrid alphabet of secession lan- 



3. The consequences of a dissolution of the Union 
upon the prosperity and happiness of the country 
would be disastrous. No one can imagine anything 
but constant strife between the two sections, which 
would prevent progress, absorb the means and re- 
sources of the whole land, and lead to the extinction 
of one faction or the other. Commerce would be 
paralyzed, manufactures discouraged, immigration 
stopped, and immense standing armies would create 
enormous national debts. Neither flag would have 
any respectability on the high seas, and the want of 
harmony here would invite warlike interference from 
abroad. It would be but a few years before England 
would have Maine ; and France would secure Texas 
and perhaps Louisiana. As to economy, it would be 



29 

better to make this war perpetual, than to incur the 
expenditures, risks, and uncertainties of the future of 
a divided country. A war lasting until the dawn of 
the next century would be less to be feared than a 
dismemberment of the Union. No man can tell how 
a slave Government and a free Government can exist 
side by side. No man can tell how peace could be 
maintained in the North West, if the mouth of the 
Mississippi should be in the hands of a foreign power. 
A division of this country reduces us to the condition 
of Mexico. 

4. The dissolution of this nation would be a cruel 
blow to the struggling patriots of Europe, and a sad 
wrong to generations yet unborn. For seventy years 
this land has been a beacon to the downtrodden 
nations of the old world. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the Creed of Liberty, has been ringing 
round the globe. That sacred sentence, "All men 
are born free and equal," has electrified the masses of 
humanity, and tyrants have been obliged to lift their 
iron heels from the neck of struggling patriots, who 
are demanding reformation and liberty. We, on 
whom the crisis has fallen, have no right to extin- 
guish the beacon light that is guiding millions to 
Constitutional liberty. God has placed us at the 
altars of freedom, and we have no right to extinguish 
the fires. The eyes of patriotism everywhere are 



30 

turned towards America ; the hopes of the world rest 
on this Government ; and he deserves all the execra- 
tion that falls on the head of coward or traitor who 
consents to have this hope of nations blotted out. 

5. If it were not a crime, and if it were not mis- 
chievous to admit secession, and if no evil could 
come to the North through dissolution, the principles 
on which this Southern Confederacy is based, should 
forbid our consent to its establishment. We live in 
the nineteenth century ; in a Christian land ; we have 
the Bible, and the religion of Christ. But this Con- 
federacy belongs to the dark ages ; it is anti-Chris- 
tian and anti-democratic. Its corner-stone is human 
slavery; its avowed object is the enslavement of 
human beings. Can we become parties to any such 
iniquity \ Can we assist in laying that corner-stone 1 
Four millions of slaves are now held by the South. 
The object of this Confederacy is to rivet the chains 
on these bondmen, and to open new territories in the 
Southwest, where these four million may be increased 
to ten million. Can we consent to that] What 
would be the verdict of posterity ? How should we 
stand before the nations of the earth'? What would 
be our attitude towards God ? Did we consent to 
such a Confederacy, our dead fathers might rise and 
curse us, and the silent heroes of the Chickahominy 
and the Rappahannock might come from their graves 



31 



and blush for us ! Well might the sun refuse to 
shine when this new crucifixion took place. 



For these, and other reasons that might be men- 
tioned, every loyal man and every Christian should 
say, " The Union shall not be destroyed." We turn 
to the despots of Europe and tell them, that though 
Woolwich bristles with preparation for war, and 
Cherbourg pours forth its iron ships, the nation shall 
not be dismembered. We turn to the South and say 
to the three hundred thousand slave-holders and their 
ignorant helpers, "You shall not commit this suicide." 
We look in the faces of the traitors at the North, and 
assure them that if they escape hanging, their names 
will go down to infamy. Twelve months ago we 
hardly dared say this. No man knew what was 
before us. But this hour is brighter. We have 
passed the Rubicon, and it would be madness and 
treason to yield now. The prospect of European in- 
terference was never so small as at present. The 
hopes of the nation were never brighter. The foolish 
fears we had that the Treasury would be exhausted, 
and the country come to bankruptcy, have been dis- 
sipated. We are growing rich; we are feeling our 
strength; we are preparing for our destiny. True, 
we are spending enormous sums of money, but a 
few years of prosperity will sweep our national debt 



32 

away * and make us forget our stamps and income 
taxes. "We are pouring out blood like water; but 
freedom's tree will grow green in soil made rich with 
that blood. The lives sacrificed are very precious, 
but they are not sacrificed in vain. 

— " None die in vain 
Upon their Country's war-fields ! Every drop 
Of blood, thus poured for faith and freedom, hath 
A tone, which from the night of ages, from the gulf 
Of death, shall burst, and make its high appeal 
Sound unto earth and heaven." 

And now, to-day our duty is prayer and humilia- 
tion — humiliation for our national pride and vanity, 
for our avarice and ambition — humiliation that we 
have so long delayed justice to the oppressed, and 
that we have been so indifferent to the rights of man ; 
that we have so disregarded God. To-morrow, we 
shall be called to act ; to welcome conscription, taxa- 
tion, and perhaps new defeats; to set our faces against 
treason, North and South ; to hold up to honor men 
who fight our battles, be they of what creed or party 
they may ; and to hold up to scorn the men who, in 
this dark hour, would betray us. 

* The ease with which our national debt could be paid, is 
illustrated by a remark made at a meeting in Manchester, 
X. H., by a gentleman, who said, "Our women could churn 
our debt out in ten years," the product of our dairy being 
$125,000,000 per annum. 



33 

Through the clouds, darkness and blood of this day 
of battle, we are beginning to see the moral, political 
and commercial advantages of this war. We have 
found that the Union is more than a rope of sand, and 
it cannot be long before our Government shall 
challenge the admiration of the world. Slavery has 
received its fatal wound. Whatever may come, Unioii 
or disunion, war or peace, that system of wrong is 
within a few years of utter extinction. We are 
learning -our mission and finding out God's plan 
concerning us. We are becoming acquainted with 
our resources, gauging the depths of our mighty 
power. We are disciplining in fire and blood for 
greatness. 

Who would have this country rolled back to where 
it was on Thanksgiving-day of 1860, with James 
Buchanan in the chair of State ; John C. Breckinridge 
as President of the Senate ; and John B. Floyd, 
Secretary of War ; and Mason from Virginia, Slidell 
and Benjamin from Louisiana, and Wigfall from 
Texas, prominent and influential members of the 
Federal Congress % Who would have this nation 
put back where it was when the North was but 
the vassal of the lordly South'? For all the blood 
we have lost, and all the treasure we have expended, 
and all the sorrow we have had, we would not go 
back to the condition of 1860. 

This Union never was so great as now. The storm 



34 

which has torn its sails, and racked its sides, and 
strained its cables, has only embedded its anchors more 
securely in the earth. The question of its permanence 
is already settled. The close of the Rebellion is only 
a matter of time ; it will come, and the arch-traitor 
will exclaim as did Lord North, when he heard of the 
surrender of Cornwallis : " O God ! it is all over ! it 
is all over!" Be patient! Be hopeful! Let God 
work it out, for His hand is in this war as surely as 
His hand was in the deliverance of the Hebrews from 
Egypt. I said this was the slaveholders' war on Law 
and Government : I might have said it was God's 
war on national wickedness, on a slaveholding bar- 
barism ; and when the war is over the wickedness 
will be expiated in blood, the barbarism will have dis- 
appeared forever. As sure as the slaveholder's hand 
is seen tearing the Constitution to pieces, God's hand 
is seen breaking off the fetters of the slave. Peace 
will not come until freedom is secured. When the 
nation is right we shall be victorious. God will keep 
us in the crucible until the dross of this plague is 
burned off. Amen, so let it be ! Who would want 
this war closed until we get ready for a firm, lasting 
peace, until the viper that has been stinging and 
poisoning us is dead \ 

O, what a country ours will be when the States 
shall be reunited ; when the dear old flag shall wave 
from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic to the 



35 

Pacific ; when slavery shall have become extinct ; 
when the barbarism of Southern society shall have 
given way to a better civilization ; when those immense 
cotton-fields shall be worked by free labor, or cut up 
into farms for our brave soldiers ; when by those blood- 
dyed rivers shall rise huge manufactories ; when there 
shall be no cause of desolation and strife, but when all 
will be animated by one common interest, and in- 
spired by a common faith in Liberty and Religion ! 
That day will come. It may be away over some dark 
trials, beyond some fearful calamities, but it will come. 
It will be such a day as Washington and Hancock 
and Adams pictured and dreamed about, and prayed 
for. It will come with blessings, and be greeted with 
Hallelujahs, it will be the Millennium of political glory, 
the Sabbath of Liberty, the Jubilee of Humanity. 



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